Topsoe has accelerated its digital transformation by deploying a scalable solution to analyze customer data in real-time and optimize services

In collaboration with Tricloud and Microsoft, Topsoe has laid the foundation for a scalable IoT Edge and data platform on Microsoft Azure to commercialize next-generation digital products for its customers.

Topsoe delivers a wide range of catalysts and process technology essential for producing clean fuels from crude oil and waste, removing harmful emissions from power plants, and raising the efficiency of industrial processes.

The global company that employs 2,100 people wanted to provide a web-based interface for accessing, searching, and analyzing historical customer data to study and optimize internal workflows of handling data and providing real-time services. The digital transformation journey includes automating data engineering practices within the company.

“We needed to start commercializing our next-generation products by building a secure digital platform ourselves,” says Sapna Ananth Narayanan, the Director of Digital Engineering and Services at Topsoe.

A scalable solution that can cater to all use cases

Together with Microsoft and Tricloud and Topsoe’s own development team, the overall aim was to commercialize the digital services built on IoT, analytics, and services platform on Microsoft Azure. Instead of consolidating a vast and incomprehensible amount of data in Excel sheets, Topsoe was looking for a digitized way to create performance evaluation reports and predictive analysis for their customers – in real-time.

“Microsoft technology enables us to optimize our digital services by streaming, collecting, and studying our customers’ data – not as a static view but live,” says Sapna Ananth Narayanan.

Topsoe also wanted to implement the platform for connection to their manufacturing sites along with enabling computer vision to assist with quality control of data and to replace manual inspection. To optimize its data analysis process at the edge, Topsoe needed an IoT Edge computing framework.

In a short span of only six months, Topsoe has implemented a scalable IoT and data solution platform that can cater to all use cases. In addition, the new end-to-end platform allows Topsoe to collect data and provide customers with digital services to support their decarbonization journey.

From use case to deployment

Together with Tricloud and Microsoft, Topsoe is taking the use cases all the way to deployment. This will include commercializing the next generation of connected services enabling end-to-end connectivity from customer factories to the cloud and providing digital services using Microsoft’s platform. To do this, Topsoe utilizes Microsoft’s latest technology with Azure Data Explorer ADX.

Throughout the entire project, we had full support from Microsoft while utilizing the newest Azure technology. That made us feel very secure and confident.

– Sapna Ananth Narayanan, Director of Digital Engineering and Services, Topsoe.

Sapna Ananth Narayanan adds: “We were ready to take this step because Microsoft’s technical and product teams supported us very closely and made sure that all their specialists were with us during the whole process – and it went a lot smoother than we anticipated. We trusted Microsoft, took a risk with the latest technology, and succeeded – and the first costumers were very, very impressed,” says Sapna Ananth Narayanan. She emphasizes the importance of a close partnership with the Microsoft account team in making this very ambitious project a reality.

“I also appreciate the Microsoft investment funding program to manage proof of concept and innovation,” Sapna Ananth Narayanan says and explains that the funding enabled Topsoe to identify and go with the right solution without taking all the risks.

Upscaling is a never-ending story

“We got a platform customized to our wishes – one that we can use to assist all our customers and also apply on our catalyst factories,” Sapna Ananth Narayanan says and adds the scaling functionality that comes with Microsoft Azure ensures a much lower operational cost per unit.

The next step is to scale insights to all customer plants by supporting an end-to-end connection from their plants to Topsoe’s cloud ensuring full-scale leverage of data and data science applications to provide world-class services to their customers. The project is also helping accelerate Topsoes ambitions to be recognized as the global leader in carbon emission reduction technologies by 2024 and further assist the decarbonizing journey of its customers.

This is not a project that ends now. It has several upscaling opportunities.

– Sapna Ananth Narayanan, Director of Digital Engineering and Services, Topsoe.

Topsoe

Topsoe is a global leader in developing clean energy solutions heavily engaged in developing solutions for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors, including steel, cement, chemicals, shipping, and aviation. Topsoe’s solutions produce essential renewable energy carriers, fuels, and chemicals of the future, such as green hydrogen, green ammonia, and methanol. The company is headquartered in Denmark and serves customers around the globe. In 2020, revenue was approximately DKK 6.2 billion, with 2,100 employees. www.topsoe.com